The Madras High Court Bench here has refused to order a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into a sexual harassment case registered against a Supreme Court lawyer on charges of stalking the wife of an Additional Superintendent of Police when the two were travelling in a bus from Hyderabad to Kanyakumari on July 28.
Dismissing an application filed by the lawyer to transfer the investigation from Asaripallam police in Kanyakumari district to the CBI, Justice S. Nagamuthu said such a plea could not be entertained when the police had completed the investigation in the case within two days of the alleged crime and filed a final report before a judicial magistrate on July 30.
“The very fact that the learned Magistrate has taken cognisance of the offences mentioned in the police report would go to show that there are prima facie materials to proceed against the petitioner. If the petitioner is aggrieved by the final report (charge sheet), he can very well work out his remedy in the manner known to law,” the judge added.
Though the petitioner alleged that he had been framed in the case at the instance of the ADSP and relied upon a 2011 Supreme Court judgement that cases involving local police officials should be entrusted to the CBI for a fair investigation, Mr. Justice Nagamuthu said that the apex court ruling could not be applied to the case on hand since the charge sheet had already been filed.
He also recorded the submission of S. Jeyakumar, Special Public Prosecutor for CBI, that the agency was already overburdened with high profile cases and therefore it could not take up investigation in cases of the present nature.
